Parables

It is a necessity imposed by its very nature upon the human spirit to illustrate with the greatest possible clearness the objects and pro- cesses belonging to the sphere of ideas. There are two leading paths which literary style pursues in order to satisfy this psychological want. The first of these is chosen when one expressly points to a parallel which the phenomenon in question has in another sphere.

The second method is when two spheres of phenomena are as it were looked at together, and when in the description of the one sphere those a eee are directly em- ployed which properly designate the notions and the phenomena of the other sphere. 2. RELATION OF PARABLES TO OTHER DEVICES oF StYLE.

—(a) When the first of the above-named ways of illustrating spiritual phenomena is adopted, this gives rise to the following stylistic devices :— (a) The Simile, as in the expressions, ‘he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water’ (Ps 15), or ‘thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel ’ (2°), or in the Arabic ‘ arrows blue like the teeth of the Ghfls’ (3 |,2, lit. ‘the surprising one,’ a species of demon), οὗ. A. F. Mehren, Die Rhetorik der Araber, p. 21.

(8) The Simile, however, not infrequently expands into an independent descrip- tion. Hence arise the following five devices of style: (i.) The Fable is a narrative in which sub- jects from the mineral, vegetable, or animal king- doms are introduced as if they were capable of thought and speech. The only instances of the Fable in the OT are the story told by Jotham (Jg 985; Kimehi, ad loc. ὈΞ wax oF osyn $v) and that spoken by Jehoash to Amaziah (2 K 14%).

Ezk 17° is not a Fable (see below, 2 ὁ). (ii.) The Parable, again, is a narrative whose subject is ersonal, and which is constructed in order to epict menething vividly. Along with its closest analogues it will be dealt with more fully below (see 3), and the question will be answered whether the OT contains something similar, such as (iii.) the Paramyth. These three kinds of fictitious illustrative narrative have their opposite in (iv.)

the παράδειγμα (exemplum) or Example, for the latter is a narrative of a real occurrence, which serves to illustrate the situation in view. Instances of the παράδειγμα are found in Ps 99° (Moses), 106: (Phinehas), Neh 13% (Solomon), 1 Mac 252-69 (Abraham and others), 2 Mac 617-8! (Eleazar), Jth 8151. (Abraham and others), 4 Mac 35" (David), etc. To the same category belong the stories of Tobit and Susanna in so far as these have a real his- torical kernel.

It is a narrative of the same kind which has for its subject that emperor’s daughter (r0p7 N23) who at the sight of Rabbi Joshua ex- claimed, ‘ What a pity that such renowned wisdom should be stored in so ugly a casket’; to which the Rabbi replied, ‘In what does the emperor, your father, store his wine?’ ‘In earthen vessels,” said she ; whereupon the Rabbi retorted that an emperor should use more costly vessels. When this counsel was followed, the wine deteriorated (Bab. Talm.

Ta anith 7*; see, further, Fiirstenthal, p. 150). So, too, the narrative of Ishtar’s descent to Hades (Die Hollenfahrt der Istar, ed. Alfred Jeremias, 1887) is related as an ‘Example’ (/.c. p. 7). Finally, (v.) the Parallel consists in placing side by ἘΠῚ the peruculss points which two sets of phenomena aveincommon. It is altogether a rare product of the rhetorical art, and as yet the present writer has failed to discover it in the OT.

(ὁ) When the material and the ideal spheres are PARABLE (IN OT; looked at as the two sides of a unity, and the ex- pressions which properly belong to the description of the concrete sphere are applied to the ideal sphere, we have the Metaphor. One sees it in such instances as the following: ‘the light of thy counvenance’ (Ps 47 (Eng. ; ‘they that be wise shall shine,’ ete., i.e. be held in honour (Dn 12°), cf.

ἀναλάμψουσιν (Wis 37), ‘super stellas fulgebunt facies eorum qui abstinentiam habuerunt’ (4 Ezr 155), ‘ye shall shine’ (Enoch 1043), of δίκαιοι ἐκλάμ- yourw (Mt 13%). When the metaphor expres- sions extend through a number of sentences, the description is called Allegorical; cf. Cicero, de Oratore, 27: ‘cum confluxerunt plures continus translationes, alia plane fit oratio: itaque genus hoc Greeci appellant ἀλληγορίαν.᾽ Certain instances of allegorical language are found in Gn 49°, Nu 248>-% ete.

, Is 1° etc. Further, Ezk 17% is not a ‘Fable’ [against Bertholet, Kurzer Handcomm., 1897, ad loc.), for the very expression ‘the great eagle,’ with which the passage commences, is to be understood not as if the author had in view a real eagle, but as referring to the subject Nebuchad- nezzar which was well known to his contem- oraries (cf. Kénig, Syntax, ὃ 297a-c, 298a, 6).

Caieed(nieutl the phrase ‘the great eagle’ is a mark of the Allegory, which could not be better characterized than in the following terms: ‘When an author does not describe that phenomenon of which he really means to speak, but another which has more or fewer points of resemblance to it, and yet carries out the description in such a way that one easily perceives that it is not the latter but the former phenomenon that he has in view, this constitutes an Allegory’ (Heinrich Kurz, Handbuch der poetischen Nationalliteratur der Deutschen, 1840).

Good instances of Allegories are Hans Sachs’ Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall, or Schiller’s ‘Das Miidchen aus der Fremde,’ not to speak of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. 3. THE PARABLES OF THE OT AND THEIR